


Never Again

by j_philly_b



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 17:05:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8022046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_philly_b/pseuds/j_philly_b
Summary: Finding out you're about to get everything you ever wanted can be terrifying.





	Never Again

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I think about Killian Jones getting his happy ending. References to Millian.

He slid his left arm under her thigh and used his shoulder to nudge her leg to lie at an angle. Finally satisfied with the positioning, he laid his head on her inner thigh, curling his left arm around her hip to hold her in place and resting his right hand next to her sex. He could feel the heat radiating off of her as he stared at her still flat stomach.   
  


The shock was starting to wear off, as a range of emotions started to battle within. A child, a family, something he never thought he’d have again. Yet here he was, awake, alive, holding on to his future and terrified it would slip out of his grasp at the blink of an eye.   
  


He could feel her fingers threading through his hair, a light pressure, a signal that she was there with him. Not pushing, not directing, simply reassuring that it was real, that she was real, that they were real. He let his eyes fall shut against the swirl of emotion in his head, pressed the fingers of his right hand into the crease between her thigh and her sex, feeling her blood thrum through her body, calming him, centering him.   
  


He let himself remember. The centuries faded away and he was once again that boy being shooed out of their home, letting Liam lead him away by the hand, tears streaming down his face. He could hear his mother’s screams, saw the midwives scurrying in and out of the house, saw the tension on their faces. He was too young to understand, but he knew those screams weren’t good, weren’t right. He wanted to run away, to hide, to never hear his mother scream like that again, but he was frozen in place, watching, waiting.   
  


As suddenly as they began, the screams stopped, all movement in and out of the house stopped. The silence was deafening, it was worse than his mother’s screams. He wanted to ask Liam what happened, he wanted to break that terrible silence, but before he could the door to the house opened and one of the midwives walked out with a bundle in her arms. The sight of the blood soaked sheets stunned him into silence, the grim look on the old woman’s face as she dropped her burden into a barrel and turned back to the house without a word told him more than words ever could.

  
After that day his dealings with women were few and far between. His life was lived on ships with men. Until there was Milah, but in all their years together having a child of their own was never a consideration. At first, because she was enjoying her freedom, living life with a passion and a sense of adventure she never thought she’d have. They sailed the world, or at least what they knew of the world, fighting, loving, living as if each day could be their last. A life of extremes was not a life for children.

  
Then the guilt started to set in, and Milah longed for Baelfire. By then he was of an age that he could join them on their adventures. They talked of finding him, of convincing her husband to let the boy come live with them, to live a life of adventure and excitement and passion. But that was never meant to be. There were no screams this time, her life ripped away by another, his chance at a family taken by jealousy and hate.

  
After that, he swore off the idea of family, latching on to his revenge. Until that fateful day when his path crossed that of the boy he would have called his own. The boy he would have devoted himself to, the boy for whom he would have changed the course of his life, for whom he would have given up his revenge. But the boy didn’t want him, rejected him, hated him. The boy who ripped his heart out with a look, and proved once again that a man like him was not meant to have a family.

  
He may have known women in the centuries that followed, cold comfort after spending too much time among men trapped on an island of children that wanted nothing more than to kill him, but those women hadn’t made him feel anything. No, Emma was the first woman in centuries to give him hope, to make him believe that his life wasn’t wasted, that he could be a good man, that he could live the life he had wanted. And now, she was here, in his arms, living proof that he was loved, that he could be a part of a family, his own family, his own blood. The sheer terror that it could be taken away in an instant overwhelmed him, made him gasp for air, tense his hand and press his face into her thigh as the tears fought for release.

  
He felt her gentle tug at his hair in response, pulling until he titled his head back and opened his eyes to look at her as she rested her other hand on his exposed cheek.

  
She stroked his cheek and nose, brushing away the tears as her own eyes grew wet. “We will love her, and protect her, and she will have the family we both dreamed of. You will never be alone again. Never.”

  
He drew a deep breath before tightening his hold on her. “Never alone, never again.”

 


End file.
